


Dirty Martini

by simplecoffee



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dom/Sub, Collars, Dom/sub, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Service Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 15:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21283928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/pseuds/simplecoffee
Summary: She told herself not to fall for him.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47
Collections: Femdom Exchange 2019





	Dirty Martini

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MistressKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/gifts).

Virginia Potts is a stereotype. No - an _archetype_. She's a business major with her feet in stilettos and her hair in a red-velvet-ribboned ponytail. She's an organizer, a button-pusher, a real go-getter, a Most Likely To Succeed. People who see her know she's a domme, because she walks like it; talks like it. When she speaks, she is obeyed. It's the only vestige of her heart she wears on her sleeve.

Her parents, her friends, her colleagues are convinced she'll settle down one day. Have a nice little sub who'll wear sharp suits and worship her shoes and beg her for pain. Who'll act out for her benefit, pretend to say no, and smile when she slaps them across the face, and then they'll watch a movie and fall asleep and start the next day by doing it all again. Gin wants to be knelt for - who doesn't, after all? - but there are more important things than who gets to wear your collar. More than that, more than most things, Gin wants a career. And she knows where to get it.

Tony Stark is an archetype. No...a stereotype. A brat of a sub since the age of sixteen, when the tabloids snapped him wearing a necktie belonging to another boy at MIT, caught him kissing that same boy later. Snapped him night after night, wearing diamond chokers, emeralds, scarves; strings of lovers, strings of pearls. Sometimes, wearing not much else. Never the same piece of neckwear twice. You can't tame genius, he says to the press with a vulgar wink, for more than a night. You can only tie it down once, and _try_ to fuck its brains out.

But be the erratic, undoubtedly genius CEO as he may, Stark Industries is a behemoth of the corporate world, and affords the best array of opportunities, the best path forward and upward, so Gin gives it her best shot. Gives him her best shot. After all, who doesn't know he needs a full-time wrangler to keep him in check? 

She gets the job. She doesn't expect to keep it for three years, much less ten. She doesn't expect to get a kick from organizing the life of a lazy, scattered genius, and she doesn't expect her boss's fabled brattiness to stop pointedly short of disrespect.

She doesn't expect to start thinking of herself as Pepper. Pepper Potts.

It's silly. It's perfect. It's a little fragment of her heart she never knew existed, and that she now dares to wear on her sleeve.

She learns to read Tony, over the years. First quickly, because it's her job to get him where he needs to go - where Obadiah needs him to go. Then, slower, because he's there for the reading. Because she likes to know when he's pleased and not bored, and not just saying yes or thank you or that-will-be-all-Miss-Potts when it's expected. Because she likes to know when he's on the verge of a new invention, so she can give R&D or marketing a stealthy heads-up. Because she likes that Jarvis' voice smiles at her when she walks into Stark Mansion in the mornings, and she likes that Tony smiles at her, even when she tells him what to do.

She only has to remind herself from time to time not to fall for him. Times like walking into his workshop that only she and Rhodey and Obadiah have access to, watching him lost in his work for seconds, minutes, before he surfaces and sees her there. Times like when Jarvis tells her he asked him to find out her favourite brand of tea and stock it for her when she comes over. Times like when he comes home without a stranger's collar on, finds her still there working on files, and shares a quiet snack with her before retiring for the night. (Times when she doesn't have to think of him tied down, marked, by someone else.)

She dates, occasionally. Collars a sub or two, sometimes for the night, sometimes for longer. Gets her heart broken. Mends it again. Builds the art collection at Malibu to get her mind off things.

And then Tony gets taken, and she knows with a sinking, desperate certainty that he is all she has. 

Pepper thought she knew heartbreak; she knows now she only ever will if she lets herself believe he's gone. She clings to hope till he comes back, _different,_ comes back wild with truth in his eyes. Comes back a kind of real that steals the breath from her lungs when he pleads with her to stay. Steals the breath from her lungs when he loses his voice next to her on a balcony, and disappears to get her a drink he remembers, correctly, that she loves.

She reads him, all the new chapters and verses of him, and she stays. She stays through shockwaves and revelations, through disaster after mishap after battle after _palladium poisoning_, stays even though sometimes she questions her own sanity for doing so. Stays even though it barely sinks in that she's gone from PA to CEO herself, a ten-year career path she'd never have dreamed - and never have dreamed it'd be the least of her worries while the world exploded around her.

Never have dreamed she'd break and resign the position in a _scream,_ standing on a roof while Hammertech fires die down around New York, and watch Tony Stark remove his helmet and sink to his knees at her feet.

"You deserve better," he tells her in lieu of accepting her resignation, voice soft, eyes wide, pupils blown. The armour leaves his throat exposed in deference. "Pepper, you deserve - You've taken such good care of me. I mean, I've been in a tough spot - you got me through it - so...right?"

"Get up, Tony," she whispers, because she knows what he's asking, what he's offering. Wants to shout at him more for picking the worst time, for not _telling_ her, for nearly dying and leaving her alone again and again and again. _Get up, Tony,_, she thinks, and can't say it a second time.

He doesn't get up. He waits for her to make her decision, patient like he never is. Quiet, like the famous bratty sub he is could never be - or so everyone else who's ever known him would want to believe. He waits for her to step forward, to run her fingers through his hair from forehead to nape, a ritual he's never done before, that she's done all of twice. He bends his head, and waits for her to speak.

"Stand up, Tony," she says, voice shaking. Offers her hand. "Stand up for me."

He takes it, and obeys, and she kisses him. And then she lets him fly her home.

They become a stereotype. Well, no: an archetype. Tony wears her collar on special occasions; appears on her arm when he's not fighting crime. The tabloids say she's got him tamed. She tells them she's got a company to run, and Tony tamed himself. 

Stark Industries rises to ever greater heights, and they make things and solve problems and drive the worldwide clean energy wave, and sometimes his tie will match her suit, and sometimes they'll both be red. Sometimes his cufflinks will match her earrings, and they'll be rubies set in gold. He's the only facet of her heart she wears, proudly, on her sleeve.

(She tries not to think about SHIELD; about the fact that someday he might be called up in a fight to save the world.)

In the tower they built, he kneels for her. As soon as she asks; ratty sweatshirt, motor-oil-stained jeans and all. There's a streak of grease on his forehead, shadowing the gentle curl of his hair. She'll clean his hands for him in a moment, see to the nicks in his fingers from tinkering. He'll ease off her stockings, and massage her aching feet. They'll watch a movie. They'll fall asleep. But first, she bends to whisper in his ear, hear his murmured, reverent _yes_, and gently knot a red velvet ribbon round his throat.


End file.
